Content distributors, including broadcasters, such as cable and satellite companies are often confronted from a business perspective between methods of generating revenue from ad based content in addition to, or as an alternative to, subscription based sources of revenue. For example, cable companies may generate revenue from cable service subscription fees with revenue from advertisements serving as an additional income source.
Many subscription based broadcast content distribution services are provided in combination with personal video recorders (PVRs), also known as digital video recorders (DVRs), which allow for enhanced capabilities with regard to recording broadcast program content. The DVRs provide subscribers a great deal of flexibility with regard to recording program content and playback of the content. Some DVRs offer such functions as “one-touch programming” for automatically recording every episode of a show for an entire season, “commercial advance” for automatically skipping through commercials while watching a recorded broadcast, an “on-screen guide” for looking up recorded programs to view, etc. The PVRs may also suggest programs for recording based on a user's viewing habit. These devices also enable the “pausing”, “rewinding” and “fast-forwarding” of a live television (“TV”) broadcast while it is being recorded. While the commercial skip function is attractive to subscribers, it can adversely affect add revenue since advertisers get little or no benefit from a commercial which is skipped.
Conventional content distributors, e.g., broadcasters, are coming under increasing competition from Internet based on-demand streaming services. Such services often provide video content on demand, e.g., by streaming short clips, following presentation of a mandatory advertisement which a viewer is prevented from fast forwarding or skipping. Often users of such services are not allowed to record program content for later playback and must watch the content in real time as it is streamed. By minimizing the content storage in the player device, the content distributor is given a fair amount of control over the content and can limit the supply of content so that the next segment of a program is only supplied after display of an advertisement. In such implementations, the short video segments and advertisements are often stored as separate files. The video server in such a system streams the advertisement stored in one file prior to the video clip stored in another file. While a viewer is allowed to fast forward through the video clip, e.g., a portion of a television program or movie, the user is made to watch the advertisement at normal playback speed. A user may be informed of the time remaining during the mandatory advertisement by way of a countdown time at the bottom of the screen during presentation of the mandatory advertisement. While the countdown timer normally indicates the time to the end of the advertisement, there may be downloading and/or streaming delays before the next video clip is actually presented. This is not normally an issue in the Internet streaming case since the viewer is often not paying for the content and is accustomed to delays as different segments are downloaded. The mandatory advertisement serves as a revenue source from which the Internet based content provider can generate revenue by charging advertisers for the displayed advertisement. The video clip and advertisement need not be kept to a particular broadcast schedule and thus can be of varying durations without affecting the encoding of the video clip. This is because the encoded video clip need not take into consideration or include information relating to an advertisement or its duration which can be determined separately by the on-demand server.
While non-optional advertisements have not generated the level of revenues that many subscription services have been able to generate, advertisement funded content distribution approaches of various types remain a source of competition with which more conventional broadcast content distribution services will have to contend with for the foreseeable future.
In view of the above discussion, it should be appreciated that there is a need for improved content distribution methods and/or content encoding approaches which will allow content distributors such as cable and satellite companies to optimize revenue generation from either advertisements and/or subscription services. It would be desirable if broadcast content providers could provide content in such a manner that commercial countdown timers could be associated with and displayed with regard to some commercials. It would also be desirable if the content distributor could control whether commercial presentation was mandatory and/or subject to user video control. It would also be desirable if a content distributor could make the commercials mandatory for some users but optional for others in a manner that allows the content distributor to try and maximize revenue from advertisements and/or subscriptions.